Bob Barr as a Serious Spoiler
There was a time, not too long ago, when Bob Barr could have played spoiler. He was taking enough GA voters that McCain would lose the state to Obama. Some of that has turned around since Palin was added to the ticket.
Today, Bob Barr filed suit against Obama and McCain in Texas, accusing them of missing the filing deadline. This is going to be interesting. Texas has 34 electoral votes and McCain holds a solid 20 point lead there.
Tags: Barack Obama, Delaware, John McCain
I have trouble seeing this happening, but oh, what a circus it would be!
And without Texas, there is no way McCain can win. I will happily give Barr that state if it means McCain loses.
Are you all sure the Democratic Party has not bought out Barr / the Libertarian Party?
I mean, I am fairly certain the man means well (I hope), but he has to realize that he has a snowball’s chance in a fusion reactor of actually winning… and that doing this would possibly single-handedly toss the election to Obama…
Bob Barr is no threat to the election. Most of his people are the ones who ‘sit out’ elections in most cases.
McCain will win Texas easily.
The post made for an interesting read. I think most people can follow the logic in the Barr suit and would have to agree that it has merit.
I also think the snowball has a better chance. If this thing even gets a hearing before the election, it should take the Texas Supreme Court about five minutes to rule the “intent” of the law was not to disenfranchise large numbers of people, etc. etc. and that this is all an unfortunate, unforseen consequence. All for naught. Everyone stays on the ballot.
If it were MS, I would not have put it past the courts to leave McCain and Barr on, and somehow remove Obama on a technicality.
My fault, edisonkitty… when I said “winning”, it should have read “winning the Presidency”.
As for this challenge of his… well, according to the letter of the Texas law that he is basing it on…
Agreed. According to the letter of the law, it looks pretty clear that Barr is right. Unfortunately, we ceased to be a nation of laws some time ago, and are instead ruled by people with wealth, connections, and power. I doubt Barr will prevail in any way with his lawsuit, no matter how much merit it has.
Also, agreed he has no chance of winning the presidency.
It’s a given that Barr has no chance of winning. That’s not the issue.
What Libertarians SHOULD say to people is they don’t have to worry about that and they should vote as a PROTEST vote.
Not everyone likes the Libertarian Party, but they HATE the Democrats and/or the Republicans, so you need to remove the fear that the L.P. candidate might actually win and they will have a legitimate outlet for their anger.
The Ds and Rs will never be run out of Washington so the only way to affect change is to scare the hell out of them, and that means voting for a single party. I figure if Barr (or the next guy) gets 6-8% of the vote the powers that be will see they might start losing and clean up their acts.
They don’t really have to win to be effective and write-ins for cartoon characters don’t faze them a bit.